letting the freaks flop around in the spotlights

good morning ~

(click the link / oil spot in the driveway to listen)

My Big Breakletting the freaks flop around in the spotlights

today's track is an excerpt from a longer thing I've been working on - much of the sound is a resynthesized recording of my piano played with an ebow

on Friday I'm contributing some gentle sounds to big fundraiser to see the Avalon Lounge through what has been a brutal business winter - happily, tickets are sold out but there will be a few at the door I'm hearing if u wanna join

then on Saturday I will be having much fun guest ripping in the the Lea Thomas band at Big Cat Kingston (you can't imagine how much I enjoy playing a lengthy guitar solo on this song)

The first time I ever came to the town of Catskill was in early 2019. My buddy Cassandra and I drove to town in her giant Buick and played a show at a coffee shop with a bar and a surprisingly large piano in the back. Vibes were phenomenal, someone gave us their last nug in gratitude for the music. The owners mentioned in passing that they were getting ready to open up a place around the corner, that they had somehow magically come into owning a building that used to be a nightclub / house music spot, they were gonna do bands and DJs and stuff, plus there would be Korean food. I was an unrepentant club rat at the time with big, shiny stars in my eyes about what was possible in the vast country of the Hudson Valley - it was far from the rotten grocery store dumpsters and the demonic screams of the subway as it sparked past my block in Bushwick, plus now it would have a club named after a Roxy Music track. I couldn't imagine anything cooler.

That this place came to be in the form described feels no less miraculous and eerily targeted to my specific interests. Did I will it into existence? No, some people labored ingeniously for it. That it also managed to survive COVID - which struck down the possibility of sweaty dance floors so shortly after they opened - also feels like divine intervention. And that it managed to meet my long held very high expectations after years of anticipation is frankly amazing.

Its corner off of Main Street is dominated by its enormous neon sign glowing an underwater turquoise against the emerald green exterior paint job. As you walk in, above the door to the right, a vestige of its former life - "DOUBLES" in stained glass in the transom. There's the bar, a sticky slab of laminated rough hewn wood and I probably know the person working behind it. Up the stairs to the right is what I think of as the lounge - pool tables, big booths, couches, a surprisingly generous skylight. Downstairs, past the constantly swinging open kitchen door is the venue. A jewel box stage with components of a sound system that allegedly came from legendary NYC club the Paradise Garage. Disco balls and subwoofers in a room where it's easy to get lost in the sweetness of the fog, not just another bar.

It became somewhere I wanted to be often in July of 2021, in those gleaming few months of vaccinations before the other variants washed over us. I held a birthday party there which I think has been previously described here in great detail. Max DJed, and as my pre-recorded backing band reached a glorious Pet Shop Boys-esque crescendo Liam threw on the fog machine and the lasers while Gracelee served slices of an enormous surprise sheet cake, we danced with frosting on our faces. It was a great fucking night. Somewhere out there is a This American Life style radio documentary centered around this show that sadly seems lost to time, I spent the whole weekend talking into a microphone. But the thing that resounds with me now almost three years later is how game Avalon was, not only willing but gleeful.

Despite living an hour away we were there often, doing our best to give ourselves over the dance floor and shining our fingers with the grease of a hundred scallion pancakes. I played gigs there, I went to gigs there and started running sound occasionally, Gracelee had a really great birthday there once - I made risograph flyers for it and Leah baked a cake with matcha in it to give everyone energy for partying. Friends came from all over, everyone crashed in this mansion we had access to, Sarah played an extra hot Black Box track and we all lost our minds. And this was all before we happened to move to the same county - thank god the one place we could manage to get our hands on is a twelve minute drive from the Avalon.

It is in no way a perfect place. It could use some upgrades, some upkeep, some cleaning. Personally, I have mixed feelings about the whole notion of a bar and I sometimes don't like the energy of some of the regular crowd when they're too deep in the soju cocktails. For performers it can be hard to get people out to what feels sometimes like a very small town - I've run sound at shows with fewer people in the audience than on stage, but that happens everywhere, right?

But despite any criticisms - which honestly I had to dig quite deep to find - it simply never feels shitty, or exploitative, or jaded about what its doing. It never feels like just another venue or a place dead set on extracting capital from the wallets of the walk-ins. They're feeding people and letting the freaks flop around in the spotlights and the only blood they're squeezing from a stone is that which they need to survive, seemingly. I have never been made to feel like the music is in the service of bar sales. There might not be a ton of people at your show but you will absolutely get 100% of what's taken of the cover. Plus I know for a fact that if I were physically threatened or drunkenly harassed like I have been at other venues that Joe the door guy would be ready to throw down in a heartbeat.

If you're not diligent enough, the forces of the world as they are draw all beautiful things and friendly places down into the muck of uncaring. They don't want us to congregate, they don't want us to be nourished, they don't want us to want for nothing more. You are very blessed if there is a room out there you care for. You are even more blessed if there's a room out there that cares for you.

But what about you? Have you been lost in the fog lately? What are your feelings about bars in general? What room cares for you?